The New York Times has an obituary up for Al Goldstein, who at one time was the most outspoken defender/purveyor of pornography in this country….and quite a celebrity in New York. A friend of mine once remarked that there was no aspect of sex or person so attractive that Al Goldstein couldn't make it, he or she repulsive. Every time I came across him on some talk show, I was reminded of the joke where someone asked Woody Allen if sex was dirty and he answered, "Only if you're doing it right."
I admit to a certain admiration for Mr. Goldstein's outspoken rants. You know the song lyric about how freedom's just another word for nothing more to lose? Al Goldstein used to demonstrate that a person can say remarkable (sometimes, even true) things when they don't have a shred of dignity or self-image left to protect. One night on Tom Snyder's old show that followed Carson, Goldstein unleashed a hysterical diatribe against government interference with private sex lives that, bleeps aside, was like the Gettysburg Address of getting Uncle Sam out of the bedrooms of consenting adults.
But that's not why I bring him up here. I love New York Times corrections. Very few newspapers make them at all and the ones that do usually do only the real significant ones. Here's one they ran on the Goldstein obit that could only appear in The New York Times…
An earlier version of this article misstated the name of a movie Mr. Goldstein starred in. It is "Al Goldstein & Ron Jeremy Are Screwed," not "Al Goldstein & Ron Jeremy Get Screwed."